142 Wilson Hall
Schedule of Events:
9.00 a.m.
Coffee
9.30 a.m.
Welcome and Introduction – Enrico Cesaretti
9.45 – 11.00 a.m.
Panel 1: Questioning Boundaries
Massimo Lollini (Dept. of Romance Languages, University of Oregon), “The Ancient Roots of a Non-Anthropocentric Philosophy: A Pythagorean Perspective”
Monica Seger (Dept. of Modern Languages - Italian, College of William & Mary), “Walking the Land: Toxicity, Transcorporeality and Phytoremediation in Southern Italy”
Louise Westling (Dept. of English and Environmental Studies, University of Oregon), “Merleau-Ponty's Ecophenomenology and Human Enmeshment in the Semiosphere”
11.15 – 12.30 p.m.
Panel 2: Energies, Ecologies, Matters
Karen Pinkus (Dept. of Italian & Comp. Literature, Cornell University), “Thinking Decarbonization with Italian Autonomia”
Elena Past (Dept. of Classics and Italian, Wayne State University), “Thinking on Foot in the Hydrocarbon Sublime: Sorrentino’s Petrocultures”
Heather Sullivan (Dept. of German & Comp. Literature, Trinity University, “Petro-Texts and Material Ecocriticism”
12.30 – 13.45 p.m.
Lunch
14.00 – 15.15 p.m.
Panel 3: Mediterranean Narratives Between Bios and Zoe
Federico Luisetti (Dept. of Romance Studies - University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), “Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Political Animism”
Damiano Benvegnù (Dept. of French & Italian, Dartmouth College) “How Much Animal There Is in Us: Primo Levi's Animal Testimony”
Pasquale Verdicchio (Dept. of Literature – Italian & Comp. Lit. UCSD), “This Nostrum That is Neither Sea nor Remedy: Mediterranean Re-visions”
Keynote Speakers
"Afro-Atlantic Genealogies of the Global South"
Laurent Dubois (History and Romance Studies, Duke University)
Wednesday, November 16, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m.
Nau Hall 101
Plenary Panel: "Southern Theory"
Juan Obarrio (Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University), Debjani Ganguly (English, University of Virginia), and Laurent Dubois (History and Romance Studies, Duke University)
Moderated by Ian Baucom (Buckner W. Clay Dean of Arts & Sciences, University of Virginia)
Thursday, November 17, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m.
Nau Hall 101
"Poetry, the Global South, and the Migration of Form"
Jahan Ramazani (University of Virginia)
Friday, November 18, 4:00 - 5:30 p.m.
New Cabell Hall 236
"Where Next? The Global South Out West," Tsitsi Jaji (English, Duke University)
Saturday, November 19, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m.
New Cabell Hall 236
Historically, the idea of the ‘Global South’ can be traced to the Brandt Report of 1980, which posited a divide between countries of the North and South according to technological development, GDP, and standard of living. A cultural genealogy of the term stretches back even further to the 1955 Africa-Asia Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, which inaugurated ‘Third World’ collaborations, decolonization movements, and heralded a sustained engagement with the postcolonial as an historical epoch.
Notwithstanding these specific genealogies, ‘Global South’ today appears as an unsettled and unsettling frame from which to contemplate the world. Some think of it as a post-Cold War era replacement for the ‘Third World’ (and so primarily covering Africa, Latin America, South and Southeast Asia, but not Europe, America and the Mediterranean worlds), while others use it synonymously with the idea of underdevelopment and deprivation wherever these are found. Yet others see it as a ‘frontier in the unfolding history of neoliberal capitalism’ and a window from which to grasp the conditions of intelligibility of our global present: historical, cultural, aesthetic, political, environmental, biomedical and technological. The antinomy with the more privileged Global North persists both in the domain of political economy and in culturalist perceptions of a decolonial reinvention and invigoration of non-Western lifeworlds.
As will be obvious from the above, the idea of the ‘Global South’ has varied inflections across the disciplines. An economist’s understanding of it does not converge with that of a historian or a literary scholar or even that of a media specialist. At the same time, the paradigmatic force of the term is not in doubt, one that makes intelligible larger constellations of meaning beyond the specific historicity of its origins in a postcolonial and post-Cold War world. The Global South currently exists at the confluence of and tension between systems of knowledge and ways of conceptualizing space, habitations, cultures, aesthetics and political economy. Our colloquium will explore the many dimensions of this concept – philosophical, historical, political, spatial and aesthetic - as they inform contemporary scholarship.
Kirin Narayan was born in India to an American mother and Indian father, and moved to the United States to attend college. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California—Berkeley. Her first book, Storytellers, Saints and Scoundrels: Folk Narrative in Hindu Religious Teaching (1989), won the first Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing from the American Anthropological Association and was co-winner of the Elsie Clews Prize for Folklore from the American Folklore Society. Her novel Love, Stars and All That (1994) was included in the Barnes and Nobles Discover Great New Writers program. In the course of researching women’s oral traditions in Kangra, Northwest Himalayas, she collaborated with Urmila Devi Sood to bring together a book of tales with discussions of their meaning and ethnographic context in Mondays on the Dark Night of the Moon: Himalayan Foothill Folktales (1997). An interest in family stories and diasporic experience inspired My Family and Other Saints (2007). Teaching ethnographic writing led her to compose Alive in the Writing: Crafting Ethnography in the Company of Chekhov (2012), that includes galvanizing extracts, prompts and writing exercises. Her forthcoming book, Everyday Creativity: Singing Goddesses of the Himalayan Foothills explores creativity and well-being among women singers in Kangra, and will be released by the University of Chicago Press in 2016.
Kirin Narayan has received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Institute of Indian Studies, the School of American Research, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research in the Humanities, and the University of Wisconsin Graduate School. She received a Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of Wisconsin in 2011. Since 2001, she has served as an editor for the Series in Contemporary Ethnography at the University of Pennsylvania Press. She currently serves on the Committee of Selection for the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Ken joined the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific in 2013 as Professor of Anthropology and Director of the School of Culture, History and Language, having served previously at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Harvard University and the University of Oregon. He is a specialist on Southeast Asia and a Past Editor of the Journal of Asian Studies (2005-2008). His ethnographic research in Indonesia has focused on the cultural politics of minority ancestral religions (1982-1992), and more recently (1994-2008), on a long-term collaboration with painter A. D. Pirous, exploring the aesthetic, ethical, and political ambitions shaping Islamic art and art publics in that country. Ken has been the recipient of major postdoctoral fieldwork fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. His fellowships for writing and study include awards from the National Endowment of the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. His current research projects are two: The first looks at the production of “companionable objects and “companionable conscience” in an effort to link artworks to ethics, affect, language, and public culture. Another involves a comparative look at early postcolonial artists in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and India, and aims at theoretical and disciplinary issues surrounding public culture and the anthropology of art and visual culture.
Professor Raffaele Laudani, Director of the UVA-Duke-Bologna Academy in Global Humanities and Critical Theory, in the U.S. to visit Duke and UVA, will be discussing this collaboration between the three universities, the program and its summer school, which has now matured into a year-round Academy in Global Humanities, as well as the various opportunities available. We encourage you to make every effort to attend on Friday, September 9, 10:30AM-12:00PM, in Nau Hall 342.
About Raffaele Laudani:
Raffaele Laudani is Director of the UVA-Duke-Bologna Academy in Global Humanities & Critical Theory, and Associate Professor in the Department of History and Human Cultures at the University of Bologna, where he teaches the History of Political Thought and Atlantic Studies. Prof. Laudani graduated in Political Science in 1998 at the University of Bologna and earned in 2003 a PhD in History of Political Thought and Political Institutions at the University of Turin and in Philosophy and History of Ideas at the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis. His research focuses on the history of modern and contemporary political thought. He has published several volumes and essays on the Frankfurt School, globalization, disobedience, African-American abolitionism. He is the editor of the Italian edition of Herbert Marcuse's uncollected papers. At the moment he is studying the Atlantic dimension of modern political thought. He has participated and organized several international meetings and seminars and participated in numerous collective national research projects. He created and edits the book series "Marcusiana" (Manifestolibri). He is member of the editorial board of the journals Filosofia politica and Storicamente, among others. Since 2006, he is the director of the Bologna International Committee for the Cartography and Analysis of Contemporary World and of its website (www.cartografareilpresente.org). He was political columnist of the newspaper L'Alto Adige. He is a contributor for several cultural and political newspapers, such as Le Monde diplomatique and il manifesto. Among his recent works are: Politica come movimento. Il pensiero di Herbert Marcuse (Il Mulino, 2005); Disobbedienza (Il Mulino, 2011), Disobedience in Western Political Thought: A Genealogy (Cambridge University Press, 2013); Secrets Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort (Princeton University Press, 2013). https://www.unibo.it/sitoweb/raffaele.laudani/cv-en
Please mark your calendars! On May 4, New York-based dance troupe Time Lapse is coming to Charlottesville to perform "Ice Cycle" in the Old Cabell Auditorium at 8pm. This multimedia piece, with choreography by Jody Sperling and music by UVA Music Professor Matthew Burtner, meditates on the precarity of Arctic icescapes in an era of global climate change. Initial comments call this performance "astounding, gorgeous, heartbreaking, and necessary." "Ice Cycle" is a crucial example of the growing body of art that translates the abstract fact of climate change into sensory details and narratives that hold people's attention. We are fortunate to have the chance to see it performed live. The event is FREE and open to the public; you must reserve your ticket through the UVA Arts Box Office.
April 22nd, Friday, Faculty Lounge: 2.00pm-3.30pm: Graduate Workshop - "Spatial Concepts for Postcolonial Literary Inquiry" Contact Prof Jennifer Wicke to reserve space in grad workshop: jaw2b@virginia.edu
BIO: Ato Quayson is Professor of English and inaugural Director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto, where he has been since 2005. Prior to that he spent a decade on the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge, and was also Director of the Centre for African Studies and Fellow of Pembroke College. Professor Quayson's has published widely in postcolonialism and African studies, diaspora studies, disability studies, and urban studies among others. His two most recent books are Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism (Duke University Press, 2014) and The Cambridge Companion to the Postcolonial Novel (Cambridge University Press, 2015).
This talk is part of UVA's "Power, Violence and Inequality" seminars produced by Department of Politics Professors Denise Walsh and Nick Winter. More information on Evelyn Alsultany at http://lsa.umich.edu/ac/people/faculty/alsultan.html, and also http://evelynalsultany.com/. Professor Alsultany will also begiving a public lecture on Wednesday, April 20, 3:30-5pm, in Minor 125, entitled “Arabs and Muslims in the Media after 9/11: Patriotic Arab Americans, Oppressed Muslim Women, and Sympathetic Feelings.”
This talk is part of UVA's "Power, Violence and Inequality" seminars produced by Department of Politics Professors Denise Walsh and Nick Winter. More information on Evelyn Alsultany at http://lsa.umich.edu/ac/people/faculty/alsultan.html, and also http://evelynalsultany.com/. Professor Alsultany will also be giving a research talk as well on Wednesday, April 20, 12-1:30pm, in New Cabell 236, entitled "Understanding the Recent Rise in Islamophobia.”
"Pop-Up Maker's Day & Café." Celebrate student and community makers, thinkers, do-ers, and creators. Drop in and participate in a mini-workshop, grab a cup of coffee at the pop-up cafe, or make your mark on a fun community art project. 2:00-5:00PM, OpenGrounds, 1400 University Avenue
(** IHGC is a delighted key sponsor of this student-organized event, produced by OpenGrounds in collaboration with the Tom Tom Founders Festival.)
